Funding cuts threaten professional development for artists

Larger-scale galleries and visual arts organisations will need to take greater responsibility for artist professional development activity in the wake of funding cuts to 15 artists’ membership and development agencies and practice-based organisations, according to a new report commissioned by a-n, The Artists’ Information Company. The report finds that a disproportionate number of artists’ membership and development agencies and practice-based organisations have not been included in Arts Council England’s National Portfolio of regularly funded organisations (NPOs), yet many of these play a “crucial strategic development role within the visual arts ecology”.

The 15 organisations studied employ 19 full-time and 46 part-time staff, contract work for 287 freelancers, and create 133 internship opportunities and 43 artists’ mentoring opportunities annually, as well as directly or indirectly supporting almost 6,700 visual artists pursuing professional careers. Report author Dany Louise argues that visual arts organisations including Artsway and Castlefield galleries, production companies Folly, Isis Arts and PVA, and membership organisations NewWorkNetwork and Contemporary Glass Society, are key sources of professional practice expertise, providing important opportunities for artists at early and mid-career across diverse visual arts practices, concluding that bigger organisations “have neither capacity nor remit to undertake this depth of specific artist-centred development work”. She is urging the galleries and visual arts organisations that will receive NPO funding to consider “outsourcing their artists’ professional development role and commissioning services from practice-led organisations that have the expertise, networks, local reach and experience to deliver it”.